Like a Skyrocket
by William Easley
Summary: July 4, 2016: A significant anniversary for Wendy and Dipper! They're happy, but still worried about Mabel-and in Gravity Falls, the paranormal can take off at any moment and explode in your face, like a firework. A follow-up to "Father and Daughter Talk" and "Skinny Dippin'," this one will, naturally, feature some Wendip! Rated T for some non-explicit but sexy situations.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: I wrote and posted two stories, "Father and Daughter Talk" and "Skinny Dippin'" years ago. They were among my first, and they were out of the sequence that eventually I began. If you've read "Welcome Back, Cipher," and "Sick Call," but haven't read those first two stories, you might want to read them before this one, since now the continuity has grown out to engulf them!_

 _And I still do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you._

* * *

 **Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

 **1: Hot as a Firecracker**

Ever since Soos had become the manager—and then the CEO—of the Mystery Shack, it had always been closed on Sundays and Mondays. Stan had usually taken only one day a week off, Monday, though he'd gladly open the tourist trap if a carload of tourists happened to show up.

Soos and his family always took Sunday off for church, and he continued with the traditional Monday off. Oddly, under Soos's management, the Shack made more money operating only five days a week than it had under Stan at six days a week.

That might have something to do with the increased advertising that Soos had instituted, mainly by word of mouth, but also with strategic Internet ads (something Stan never mastered) and with his and Melody's pre-season appearances on morning talk shows in the Washington-Oregon-Northern California area. The TV hosts loved them—Melody was cute and perky, and Soos was weirdly hypnotic in his enthusiasm.

Finding their TV chemistry beyond his understanding, Stan always complained, "For some reason, viewers find them _adorable_ , but they found me _irritating_. How do you figure that?"

And Mabel told him, "Grunkle Stan, you have the kind of charm that must be experienced in person," which brought a smile to his face.

Mondays or no, traditionally July Fourth was another off day for the Mystery Shack, and that year's (which fell on Monday) was no exception. Soos loved big parties, and he loved to DJ, so he indulged himself every year. He even hung a supplemental sign on the Mystery Shack welcome sign down at the bottom of the driveway: CLOSED BUT COME JOIN US FOR FREE FOOD AND AN EPIC INDEPENDENCE DAY PARTY!

And many strangers did join them, tourists and random people and those whose GPS had misled them. This happened frequently in that part of Central Oregon; the satellites seemed to lose their grip or something, and many people who had never even heard of the Mystery Shack got sent there by their GPS and had to come in and ask for directions and more often than not bought merch.

Stanford, who had been absent from this dimension when GPS systems first became common, had that down on his list of anomalies, but it was on the back burner.

Dipper had read about it in Journal 5:

* * *

 _I have learned that Global Positioning Systems, which rely on satellites in permanent orbit some 32,000 kilometers from Earth, are normally accurate to within three meters. However, this is not always the case in the Valley._

 _My research reveals that in some areas of the country, and for some yet-unknown reason, the accuracy of GPS is at best spotty and in some cases nonexistent. Parts of rural Maine are notorious for this, as are parts of West Virginia, the mountainous areas of Tennessee, the so-called "Triangle of Error" marked by Winder, Braselton, and Dacula, Georgia (note to self: research whether this is the area where the devil went down to Georgia—any trace of a golden violin?), a small swatch of central Florida, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan . . ._ [and thirty other spots, including Death Valley and Twin Peaks, Washington].

 _The manufacturers of the devices have no explanation for their sometimes-errant performance except to say, "Beats me." Fiddleford and I ought to put our heads together one of these days and determine if weirdness fields are the cause of GPS devices losing their electronic minds._

* * *

Anyway.

Though he'd got to bed extremely late the night before, or more accurately that morning, after he and Wendy had taken an impromptu midnight swim, Dipper was up early on Independence Day. Wendy dragged in at seven, wearing her running shorts and shoes, but red-eyed and pale.

"Skip our run?" Dipper asked.

Wendy groaned. "No, we better do it. But, man, I never want to have a beer hangover again!"

So they ran their nature trail, on a hot bright July day. Woodpeckers hammered, towhees trilled their _chirp-chirp-chirp, teeheeheehee_ songs, off in the distance the Manotaurs were singing their anthem in their mountain retreat ("Man! Man! Man! / Taur! Taur! Taur! / Oh, we forgot O"—well, it wasn't a _good_ song) because of late they'd begun syncing their midsummer male he-taur masculinity celebration with Independence day (they'd decided that fireworks were manly) and would have their annual forest march and free-for-all eye-gouging later that day.

Though she and Dipper didn't run full-tilt, Wendy sweated profusely, something she ordinarily didn't do. When they reached Moon Trap Pond, Dipper, concerned, asked, "You want to stop and rest?"

"Nah," she said. "Sweatin' the toxins out, man."

But on their cool-down walk back, she did suggest resting at the bonfire clearing. "OK," she said as they settled on the log. "Dad kinda knows about us now."

"Should I leave town?" Dipper asked with some apprehension. "Or the country?"

She laughed. "Nah, he's cool. He wants you to ask his blessing when we're ready to announce, though. That OK with you?"

Dipper nodded. "I'll be scared, though," he confessed.

"Ah, he's more bark than bite. See, he plied me with Rimrocks to get me to open up. Oh, I found out something this morning when I was cooking breakfast for him and the boys. My mom was _not_ a gerbil. She was a Blerble."

"A what now?" Dipper asked.

"Her name, man. Dad told me the story. He was workin' for a lumber outfit run by a guy named Henry Ward Blerble, a real hardass and a tightwad, when he first met my Mom. She was old man Blerble's granddaughter. They were attracted to each other, but her family were big wheels and he was just a lumberjack, so her grandpa despised him. Her family, like, disowned him when she married Dad, but she had a sentimental streak or some jazz, so they gave me the middle name Blerble. I always thought it was Barbara! My original birth certificate just reads 'Wendy B Corduroy.'"

"Huh," Dipper said. "And I thought 'Wendy' was short for 'Gwendolyn.'"

She shook her head. "Nope. My mom liked _Peter Pan."_

"Now I have to get used to being in love with a whole new girl," Dipper teased. "Are you feeling better?"

Wendy considered the question for a moment. "Yeah, lots, but I'm swearin' off beers. At least off more than one at a time. I woke up sick as a dog."

"Are you sorry that we went—you know—swimming?"

Wendy laughed. "Skinny dipping? Nah! I've been before, but always with a bunch of others. Three or four times. I told you, it's a teen rite of passage. You're now officially a full-fledged rebellious teen!"

"I guess at the beach I acted like a kid," Dipper said. "Being so embarrassed."

Wendy laughed louder and longer. "Yeah, that's why teens usually do it in a gang. Gotta have that old peer pressure as an excuse! Did you enjoy it?"

"Parts of it," Dipper said. "Other parts—not so much. Mabel and that boy. I've got to look up Ronnie Nable today and have a word with him."

Wendy put her arm around him. "Don't get into a fight, dude. Ronnie's a meek kid. And not at all pushy—I'd bet anything that Mabel talked him into it. Tell you what, I'll see if T.K. will talk to me about Mabel and him and how they're doing. OK if I tell him we went skinny-dipping?"

"OK with me. But ask him not to spread it around," Dipper said. "My mom would have a fit if she heard."

"Deal," Wendy said. She sighed. "I love these parties that Soos throws, but you and me have a busy day up until the crowd rolls in. Fireworks later?"

"Sure," Dipper said. "This is kind of an anniversary."

"First kiss, yeah," Wendy said. "Back when we weren't really sure this young boy-old chick thing would work."

"I was always sure," Dipper said.

"Smooth!" Wendy said, grinning. She got up to walk back to the Shack, but Dipper took her hand and pulled her back down to sit beside him on the log.

"I, uh—I want to ask you something," he said. "Since it's kind of an anniversary and all."

She gave him a puzzled smile. "Sure, man. Anything."

Dipper turned so red he looked sunburned. "We've been through a lot since then," he said. "And, well—I've been thinking about this—let me know if I'm out of line, but—" He took a deep breath and then asked her a question in such a rapid and high-pitched voice that she couldn't understand him.

She put a finger against his lips. "Start over and slow down," she said gently. "This is me. You can say anything to me, Dip."

He inhaled once more and, forcing his voice to come out more slowly—but still fearful and high-pitched—he asked, "Do you want to go look for an engagement ring with me?"

Wendy bit her lower lip. "Now? This summer?"

Dipper nodded. "People up here know we're dating, anyway. And I'll tell my folks, but—I want you to have the ring first. Not that silly silver thing—"

"It isn't silly, Dipper. Not to me." Wendy pulled up her tank top to show the thin silver ring that she wore in her navel piercing. "Means a lot to me. Means the world."

"Yeah, but I want to give you a _real_ one. One that everybody can see. I saved up a chunk of my royalties from the first book—"

"For college, man," Wendy said. "Don't spend it on—"

"I've got enough for college," he said. "For two full years, anyhow, and I've got a scholarship to help, so I might be able to run what I've saved out to cover four full years. And I should get more income from the second book and the third and so on. So that's not counting my, uh—my engagement fund."

"It doesn't have to be a real expensive one, you know," Wendy said. "I'd be happy with a simple small stone."

"No! Go for a big rock!" came a voice from the brush.

Dipper grimaced. "Jeff! Stop eavesdropping on us!"

The Gnome emerged, in company with the badger queen of the Gnomes, who as usual was on a gemstone-studded leash. "Couldn't help it! I was taking Her Majesty for her morning walk and heard you two talking." He tipped his red cap, revealing a non-pointed head (at one time Ford had speculated that Gnomes had conical skulls beneath their caps). "To a Gnome, a nice gemstone is a sign of everlasting love. Remember the one we offered Mabel?"

"She's still got it," Dipper said.

"Yeah, well, we'd like it back, but we're afraid to ask for it," Jeff said. "The stone's from a thunder egg."

"A what?" Dipper asked.

"It's like a geode," Wendy explained. "Except it's not usually hollow. It has like a solid filling—chalcedony, even opal. I've seen Mabel's ring. It's got a triple blue-tinged quartz crystal in it, really pretty."

"Back when all Gnomes lived underground," Jeff said, "we used to mine thunder eggs. Every one's different from all the others. We never used to give rings to our wives, but when we moved to the surface, we found out humans did. Now that we civilized Gnomes live in the trees, the thunder eggs are heirlooms. We don't mine them any longer, and we don't have all that many left from the old days. And now Gnome ladies want rings, too, so . . ." he shrugged. "Lucky for us, the queen isn't interested in rings. She has a tiara, but she doesn't wear it much. Her head's kind of flat and it falls off when she scratches."

"I'll see about getting the ring back for you," Dipper said. "Mabel never wears it."

"Thanks. Oh, and matzo ball!"

"What?" Dipper asked.

Jeff looked embarrassed. "Isn't that what you say when somebody decides to marry somebody else?"

"I think the phrase you're looking for is _mazel tov_ ," Dipper said. "A matzo ball is a dumpling. It's made of dough."

"I'm nearly positive Stanley told us the word was matzo ball," Jeff said. "Are you sure?"

"Trust him, Jeff," Wendy said. "Though I can see how Stan would value something completely made of dough."

"Mazel tov, mazel tov, mazel tov," Jeff muttered to himself, sounding a little like a roadshow company of _Fiddler on the Roof._ The badger tugged at her leash, and Jeff said, "Oops! Gotta go. Anyhow, thanks, Dipper, and gnome-gratulations to both of you!" He and the badger rustled off into the brush.

"Thunder eggs," Dipper said. "That's a new one to me."

Now Wendy seemed to have turned a little shy. "Uh—dude, when do you want to, uh, you know—go shopping?"

Dipper shook himself out of his abstraction. "For the ring, right! Any time. Well, not today, obviously, the stores would be closed, and this will be a busy week at the Shack but—maybe next weekend?"

"Camping trip," Wendy reminded him.

"Oh, right, right. Well—maybe we could come back Monday early enough to hit a few jewelry stores?"

"OK," Wendy said. "But not in Gravity Falls, all right? People know us and would gossip before we're ready to let everyone know. Let's make a day of it. Go over to Portland, maybe. Lots bigger selection. So we'll go camping Saturday night, spend Sunday, come back to the Shack early Monday morning to get showered and changed and then—I can't believe I'm saying this, man!—go look for an engagement ring!"

"And when we get it," Dipper said, "I'm going to kneel down and ask you the right way. And you'd better say yes."

"Count on it, dude!" she said, giving him a kiss. "Hey! My headache's gone! We made a great discovery! Put it in the Journals, man."

"What?"

With a grin, Wendy said, "Love is a great cure for a hangover!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Chapter 2**

 **Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

* * *

 **2: Receipt of Fern Seed**

When they got back to the Shack, Soos was already preparing. He had built eight long wooden picnic tables (each seated ten people) that folded. For most of the year he stored them away in a narrow room in back of the shed, but when the Shack threw a picnic, they had to be brought out, unfolded, and set up on the lawn to augment the two permanent picnic tables.

They were heavy. In a pinch, Soos could manhandle one out, wrestle it to the lawn, and set it up, but really he needed help. Stan wasn't there, because he and Ford had gone for a little Vegas vacation and wouldn't return until Wednesday evening. So it fell to Dipper and Teek to help haul the tables, which was probably good exercise but not much fun.

The guys did it this way: Soos and Dipper would haul a table out, and Teek would set it up. Then Teek and Soos would go back for a second one while Dipper rested, and when they brought it back, he would get it unfolded. Then on the next trip, Soos would stay for set-up, while Teek and Dipper went to haul the next table. It worked, but it took an hour to get the job done.

Next, Teek had to get the big grill ready—not too bad, since they took care of it and kept it under cover when it wasn't in use, and they cleaned it after the end of each barbecue session. Still, he had to scrub the grills, haul out the charcoal and the two charcoal chimneys (Soos didn't like the faint taste of kerosene you get with lighter fluid), and get prepared for about an 11 AM lighting.

Dipper went inside to shower and walked into the aromas of cooking—Melody and Abuelita were bustling around, preparing ridiculously large recipes of potato salad, baked beans, chili, and other goodies. Mabel was washing the breakfast dishes and on sight of him, she enlisted him as dish-dryer and putter-upper.

"I've really got to go take my shower now," Dipper said, and he went upstairs. Mabel tagged along to open the closet and take out the Fourth of July bunting and streamers—the same old decorations, but each year she found some new way of displaying them.

Dipper showered and shaved and then got dressed for the day, in comfortable clothes, soft old jeans and well-worn sneakers, a short-sleeved red polo shirt, and of course his pine-tree cap. Mabel was downstairs again, sitting at the table and sketching out a plan for hanging the decorations. Wendy had joined the cooking crew and looked busy, so Dipper sat next to his sister. "Did you have a good time last night?" he asked with hardly any nastiness in his voice.

"Mm, probably as good as you and Wendy," she said with a mischievous twinkle. "Did you two get up to anything special? Hmm?"

"I could ask you the same thing—about you and Ronnie. Mabel, what's Teek gonna think?"

Mabel gave him a glance that bordered on being a glare. "Are you gonna tell him I went skinny-dipping with another guy?" she asked.

"No, you know better than that."

"Oh, well." Her expression shaded into mild disappointment, and she sighed. "I guess I'll have to tell him, then."

"You just did it to make him jealous," Dipper said.

Mabel tossed her pencil down with a clatter. "No duh! Look, I gave him hints, I even asked him straight out to go to the lake with me, and he was too chicken!"

"Because he stood up to you?" Dipper asked.

"No! Because he didn't trust himself or me! I mean—nothing would've happened. Not really. It didn't with Ronnie. Um—did it with you and—"

"No," Dipper said. "No fooling around. Wendy had her own reason for wanting to take a dip. Right after you two left, we swam back to shore, got dressed, she dropped me off and went home. End of story. We didn't have, you know—"

"A good time?" she asked.

Dipper lowered his voice to an irritated whisper: "Didn't have _sex!_ We, uh, never have. We're waiting for that."

"Sorry, Brobro," Mabel said, and to Dipper's mild surprise, she really sounded contrite.

"Don't be. It's a mature decision, that's all. Oh, by the way, when we were coming back from our run a while ago, we met Jeff. He asked if the Gnomes could have their ring back."

"I think the jilted girl is supposed to keep it," Mabel said, picking up her pencil again.

"Only if she's not the one who does the jilting."

"Is that the way it works?"

"I think so," Dipper said. "Ask Melody."

"I will!" Mabel dropped the pencil again, hopped up, and ran into the kitchen, and Dipper heard their voices. In a minute, Mabel came back, looking grumpy. "She says it's the proper thing to do. I want a lawyer!"

"Mabel," Dipper said patiently, "it's not a diamond ring. It has quartz crystals in it, and the band's not even gold. It's some alloy of copper."

"Sentimental value," Mabel said.

"Sentimental? You keep it in your sock drawer!"

"You can be sentimental about socks! I want a legal opinion—"

Soos came in, sweaty, and overheard. "On what, Hambone?"

"Know any lawyers?" Mabel asked him. "I want to know if a girl is engaged, and she breaks off the engagement, if she gets to keep the ring. I say yes, she does!"

Soos shrugged. "Sorry, Mabel, you're wrong. Oregon views engagement rings as a conditional gift."

Dipper looked at him in an astonished way. "What?"

"A conditional gift, dawg," Soos said, mopping his face with a blue bandana. "Like, the dude gives it to the girl dude on the understanding they're going to be married, right? So the gift is conditional on that happening. If the dude breaks the engagement, then the ring is forfeit, 'cause it's his fault and not hers, but if the girl does, then she's legally obligated to return the ring, since she's the one who broke the condition. It's in the law books. You can look it up."

"How do you even _know_ that?" Dipper asked.

Soos shrugged. "Eh, there was a big set of Oregon law books in a used-book store, and I bought 'em to fill up a bookshelf. So I read in them every night before bed. Better than a sleeping pill!"

"Soos," Mabel said with a resigned sigh, "I bow to your wisdom."

"That is the best thing to do," Soos said solemnly. "Now I am needed in the shower."

"I'll go get the ring," Mabel said. "Look, I won't be gone long, but could you start hanging up the decorations for me? I've drawn it all out here on this map of the yard."

"OK," Dipper said. "Hurry back, though. We've got a lot to do."

* * *

After fetching the ring from her sock drawer, Mabel left the Shack behind, heading down the Mystery Trail. She got as far as the bonfire clearing, and then she called out: "Hey, any Gnomes around, I need to talk to Jeff! This is Mabel Pines. Remember the leaf blower?"

She sat on the log for a few minutes, listening to the woodpeckers and the songbirds. Then, not ten feet away, Jeff popped up alone, without the Gnome Queen. "I hear you want a word with me?" he asked, politely.

"Yeah. Look, Dipper told me you want the engagement ring back."

Jeff shrugged. "Well, we do, yes. I mean, personally I'd let you hang onto it. Only it's an heirloom, see? It goes back about a thousand years."

Like Dipper, Mabel knew that to Gnomes "thousand" was a malleable measurement. Gnomes tended to lose count when they had to deal with more than twenty things, and so after a certain point any big number became "a thousand." The Gnomes insisted that their population was exactly one thousand, for example, but as far as anyone else could tell, it varied between about eight hundred and twelve hundred, depending on how many feral Gnomes joined the tree-dwellers or how many tree-dwellers got their Gnome noses out of joint and decided to go feral.

But 822 or 1199, it was always one thousand to the Gnomes. It would be one thousand if their population had exploded into the millions. Anyway, Mabel couldn't be sure how old the ring really was. She stood up, took it out of her pocket, and offered it to Jeff. "Here you go. Returning it is the right thing to do."

"Thank you," Jeff said. He took the ring and stowed it inside his cap. Then, as though he didn't want to rush off, he said, "So . . . how's your summer?"

"Not so hot," she admitted, sitting again. "Boy trouble."

"Somebody you need roughed up?" Jeff asked, looking hopeful. It was rumored around Gravity Falls that if you wanted rodents exterminated, garbage disposed of, or a loan collected, you called on the Gnomes. They weren't exactly strong-arms, but they had ways of making a deadbeat miserable until the loan payment was coughed up.

"Not like that," Mabel said.

Jeff asked, "Mind if I sit?"

Mabel patted the log, and he scrambled up onto it, fell over backwards, clambered back up, and balanced beside her. "There we go. OK, tell me about your troubles. Maybe I can help. I'm a bit of an expert on romance."

"Then why are you nearly the only single Gnome?" Mabel asked.

"Ah, that's because I'm waiting for Miss Right Gnome," Jeff said. "Plus, I'm the Prime Minister. It takes a lot of time just to keep up with the Queen and relay her commands to our people. Then, too, I'm young. Usually we Gnomes don't marry until our beards are gray. But still, I've met a lot of couples in love, so I know how they act. What kind of boy trouble do you have?"

Mabel explained the whole kerfuffle: Teek's being awarded a scholarship that would take him off to Atlanta, Georgia, for college, and her desire to stay closer to home, going to college in California, and the prospect of their being separated for a long time.

Gnomes aren't big on geography. "How far away is Atlanta, Georgia?" he asked.

"More than a thousand miles," Mabel said.

"Um—how long is that in walking?"

Mabel made a guess: "Two twenty-days of walking."*

Jeff whistled. "And even longer for Gnomes," he said. "We take shorter steps."

"Yeah. And I don't want to go to college way out there, 'cause my brobro and Wendy are going closer to our home, and I want to stay close to them. So I'd hardly even see Teek for four whole years! I just wish I knew—" she broke off.

"What?"

Mabel sighed. "I wish I knew for sure how serious he was. I mean, Teek _is_ serious, real serious. And he swears he doesn't want us to break up over this. And he says that we could keep in touch, get together every summer, and then get married once we're both out of college. But—well, _I_ could wait for _him_. I think. I do want to marry him. I just wish I knew, you know, how he is around other girls. 'Cause if while he's away he might get attracted to somebody else—well, I'd just be losing time, right? 'Cause if he fell in deeper love with another girl, I'd have to let him go. But I really do love him. I just—oh, I don't know. Wish I could spy on him just a little."

"And that would make it better?"

Mabel shrugged. "Well—I'd have a better sense of how likely it is that we both could wait that long."

"So let me understand," Jeff said. "If you followed him around and saw him talking to other girls, and he didn't, is the human word 'flirt?' Ok, flirt with them, you'd be more OK with him going away to school. But if they flirted with him and he flirted back or kissed them or something, then you'd be more OK with turning the leaf blower on him. Right?"

"Something like that," Mabel agreed, unable to hold back a smile at the thought of assaulting Teek with a leaf blower.

"So you'd need—" Jeff hopped off the log—"something like this. Watch me." He walked five steps away and vanished. Then his voice came out of thin air: "Like this?"

"Where'd you go?" Mabel asked standing up.

His voice came from thin air: "I'm still here." And he became visible again, in the same spot where he'd disappeared. "Watch. Gone again." He vanished. "Back again." He reappeared.

"You can become invisible?" Mabel asked, sitting down again.

"Yep."

"Are you guys ghosts?" Mabel asked.

Jeff looked offended. "What! Do we have horns? Do we butt heads? Do we go Baaa?"

"Ghosts," Mabel said distinctly. "Not goats."

"Oh, I thought you said—no, we're not ghosts, either. We just have the receipt of fern seed."

Mabel furrowed her forehead. "The what in the which now?"

"Receipt. It's an old word for 'recipe,' I think. And fern seed. It's a trick we learned from the fairies."

"Oh, them," Mabel made a face. "I'm not crazy about them."

"Yeah, they can be lying little jerks, and they cheat at rumblesticks, too," Jeff said. "But they do know magic. See, what you have to do, you have to collect fern seed—it's really what you call spores, but the fairies call it seeds—at midnight on Queen Grappit's Day—uh, you humans call that June 23, I think—and then mix the seeds with a few things and make it all into a powder. You sprinkle a couple pinches of it in your shoes."

"What does it do?"

"Well, it makes your feet stink a little. But it gives you the power of turning invisible. You just think invisible thoughts, and nobody can see you. Until you turn it off. You have to renew the pinches in your shoes about every week, or the power wears off."

"So you're saying if I had some of this powder—"

"You could turn invisible and follow Teek around," Jeff said. "If it will help."

"It might! You got any of the fern stuff I could have?"

"Mm, well, I have my stash, but I have to conserve it," Jeff said. "There are times when a Prime Minister doesn't want anybody to see him. I do have a little bit left over from last year, maybe enough for five or six weeks. Um, you're bigger, so it might only be two weeks. It's probably still good. The charm does wear off, but usually a batch is good for at least a year and a half or so."

"What do you want for it?" Mabel asked.

Jeff's expression became almost sly. "If we come to the picnic—can you sneak us some fresh human food? Maybe half a dozen burgers? No buns, just the meat? With a few drops of hot sauce?"

That would feed at least thirty Gnomes, Mabel figured. "Sure, you got a deal."

"Ha-cha!" Jeff did a little dance step. "You wait right here! I'll be back in a little while!"

So for ten minutes Mabel sat and waited and wondered if she were about to get herself in trouble.

Silly girl. She needn't have wondered.

* * *

 _*Though Mabel's estimate of forty days of walking was what Stan would call a wild-ass guess, it was reasonably correct, as far as it went. In fact, waling the 2600 miles from Gravity Falls to a spot south of Atlanta would, on the average, take you 860 hours. That works out to about 36 days—if you never ate, drank, slept, or stopped for a potty break. If you walked for a more reasonable eight hours every day, it would take you about a hundred and eight days. And yet there are people who would try it. Go figure._


	3. Chapter 3

**Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

* * *

 **3: Things Start Popping**

Funny how traditions spring up. You throw a Fourth of July party one year, it's an event. You throw another one the next year, it's "Oh, that was fun last year, let's go again." Three times in a row, and it's "I love these! Let's go early!"

And the fourth year, it's "We _have_ to go. It's a family tradition!"

Actually, the fireworks in the lake really were a tradition and did go back a long time. From 1865, when the Veterans of the Army of the Potomac, Gravity Falls Branch, launched an Independence Day celebration downtown to rejoice at the end of the Civil War, resulting in the Great Fire of '65 and incidentally the banishment of the five veterans, one group or another put on a Fourth of July display almost every year. After about 1890 (and three more less-great fires), these took place irregularly at the lake, following the discovery by Austin Frumpf, a leading scholar of the town, that "water don't burn." As a tradition, things were only hit or miss, though—some years there were fireworks, other years nobody bothered.

Then in 1922, Mayor Eustace Befufftlefumpter had launched the fireworks show with a rare public appearance (he normally emerged from his mansion only to buy lettuce for his Galapagos tortoise). The show had gone on every year from then until 1942, when World War II caused a shortage of fireworks. However, the grand display had resumed in 1946, not with actual fireworks, but with surplus army munitions the mayor got at a huge discount (July 4th, 1946, went down in history as the Accidental Patriotic Massacre—falling shrapnel, you know). Then in 1947, the show went back to conventional fireworks, and it had been sponsored by the city and county every single year thereafter.

Befufftlefumpter had died in August 2012, (aged 102, he said, but actually at least 112, because after he hit ninety he either lied about his age or just couldn't remember). He passed away not long before Weirdmageddon, but his successor as mayor, Tyler Cutebiker, kept up the tradition of fireworks at the lake, and the show always attracted an appreciative crowd, which generally included teens who got in a little snuggle time as they strayed away from the main group on the beach.

And by the summer of 2016, the Mystery Shack Barbecue was also on the don't-miss list. The previous year, over a seven-hour period, the Shack had attracted more than four hundred guests, and Soos was guesstimating at least five hundred this year. Abuelita and Teek were tagged as the main barbecue chefs, but Soos had brought in the Willets, an elderly couple who had a catering business, as additional help. They all got very busy before eleven in the morning, because guests were already showing up.

It was a good thing Stan was off in Nevada, because under Soos's management, all the food was free. Burgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, ribs, baked beans, mounds of potato salad, German coleslaw, tomato-mozzarella salad (a specialty of Melody's), assorted fresh fruit, a dazzling array of desserts (including, of course American Apple Pie)—it was a spectacular spread. The guests did drop voluntary contributions into a bucket and also paid for their beverages, although they could bring their own. Manly Dan usually brought a keg, but it was for his personal consumption.

Dipper felt a little overwhelmed and somewhat exhausted by the time people began to line up for their food. He checked with Teek, who was wielding a spatula the way a Samurai wields a katana, but with fewer beheadings. Teek put him on sausage duty, and Dipper wound up grilling mounds of hot dogs and bratwursts.

People came and ate in shifts of approximately a hundred at a time. They also used the occasion to visit the museum and the gift shop—Soos and Melody manned it on their own (their kids were in Portland for a couple of days, in the care of Melody's mom and dad). Soos figured later that the voluntary contributions, the admissions to the Shack, and the merch sales more than compensated for the cost of the food, plus turned a small but significant profit.

Oh, and the games, of course. Around three in the afternoon, when people had eaten so much they couldn't hold any more, they participated in the games. They no longer had the catch-the-greased-pig game, because Waddles and Widdles were now so large that if they made a serious objection to being grabbed, somebody might get hurt. Instead, Mabel put saddles on them and offered pig rides for the toddlers, and neither of the two porkers minded that.

But there was a climb-the-greased-pole game (Wendy, who had for a spell there won every year for five years straight, had retired as undefeated champ when she was fourteen), the sack race, the three-legged race, the water balloon toss, the tug-of-war, the dizzy relay (you had to put your forehead on the butt of a golf putter, spin around it twenty times, and then try to run a straight course to the next one on your team, resulting in some spectacular spills and some vomiting that even a Gnome would be hard-pressed to rival), and about a dozen more.

Once the demand for food had trailed off, Teek and Dipper gratefully started to close down, but Mabel popped up, saying she had an order for eight burgers. With a sigh, Teek grilled them, and Mabel took the cooked patties away on a heavyweight paper plate.

The Gnomes enjoyed watching the humans cavort, as they called it, but they did not personally participate in the games, being too small for most of them, unless they formed up as a unit, and even then they were not quite coordinated as a human-sized unit to compete successfully. They were all in the underbrush on the far side of the Shack, where they could climb the trees and have a clear view.

Jeff swelled with pride as she brought the burgers to them. "Two more than we bargained for!" he announced. "Gnomes! Come and get it!"

A swarm of them, male and female, each armed with a Gnome knife and fork, descended on the food. Jeff took off his hat and handed Mabel a little leather pouch, about the size of a lipstick tube. "Just one pinch, divided between your shoes," he told her. "Don't wear socks—it has to touch your bare skin to work. Try it out in private first, because you have to get the hang of thinking invisible thoughts and then thinking you want to appear again. Each pinch will last you about one or two days, if you don't change shoes. And remember—watch out, because people can't see you!"

"I'll be careful," Mabel promised. "Enjoy the bur—oh, they're gone. Want some more?"

"Sh-sh-sh!" Jeff cautioned. "You brought more than enough. If these guys eat too much meat, they go nuts."

"OK," Mabel said happily. "Thanks, Jeff!"

* * *

After they finally closed up the grills, Dipper looked for and found Ronnie Nable, who was there with his numerous family—he had nearly a dozen brothers and sisters, and he seemed to be the smallest—though not the youngest—of them all.

Ronnie looked a little apprehensive when Dipper approached him. "About the lake—" he began.

Dipper waved off his comment. "I can't criticize you, can I?" he asked. "We were doing the same thing. But tell me honestly: Was the moonlight swim your idea?"

"Uh, no," Ronnie admitted. "Mabel wanted to do it. She said she'd never done it and she was curious. So—uh. We did." He swallowed and then added hastily, "But that was all we did! I mean, I didn't even touch her! Oh, except when she drove me home, we had a little good-night kiss. But that was all! We're not serious, or—or anything."

Dipper couldn't disbelieve Ronnie. He looked miserably guilty even confessing that much. "OK," Dipper said at last. He sighed. "Don't tell anybody, OK? And I don't want to make you upset or anything, but—well, Mabel was really trying to make somebody else jealous. I don't know why girls do that, but they do."

"T.K.," Ronnie said, looking down at his feet. "Yeah, I know. I—look, I don't really have a chance with Mabel, I know that. But—but—she—I don't know how to say this—"

"She can be persuasive," Dipper said. "Yeah, I know."

Later Dipper caught up with Wendy, who was chilling on the family porch, away from the noise, a Pitt Cola in her hand. "Dude," she said, "I am so tired! We made like a _ton_ of baked beans and potato salad. Is there much left?"

"Nope," Dipper said. "Only about a quart of the beans and maybe if you really scraped, you could wind up with a cupful of the potato salad. Good job. Want to play any of the games?"

"Let's give it a pass this year," Wendy said. She took a sip from her Pitt's. "Last few days have been hectic! But we're on for the fireworks show, right?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Dipper said.

"I was thinking," Wendy said, "we could drive up to Lookout Point. Good view of the lake from there. We'd be a long ways off, but I've never seen the fireworks from up there. Might be worth a look."

"Sounds great," Dipper told her. Lookout Point was a well-known teen make-out spot. And the police probably wouldn't be up there on the Fourth of July—too busy patrolling the beach and lake.

"OK," Wendy said, grinning. She patted the cushion next to her. "Come and sit by my side."

"If you love me," Dipper said, sitting next to her on the saggy old sofa.

"Huh?"

Dipper chuckled. "I need my guitar! 'Come and sit by my side if you love me, / Do not hasten to bid me adieu. . . .'"

She hugged him. "Oh, right 'Red River Valley!' Snuggle up, cowboy, and I'll show you who loves you so true."

"Maybe not right at the moment," he said. "I can see Gnomes up in the trees over there."

"Shoot. Yeah, I see them now, too. Little voyeurs. Well, it'll be dark up at the Point. No Gnomes there."

A burst of cheering broke out as someone did something in the games. A couple of minutes after that, Teek wandered by. "Hi," he said. "Where's Mabel?"

"Don't know," Dipper said. "She was back near the pig pen earlier."

Teek sat down on the edge of the porch. "Man, my feet hurt," he said. "Even with the Willets, I feel like I've been cooking for an army!"

"Hey, Teek?" Wendy said. "How are you and Mabes getting along?"

"She's a little bit mad at me," Teek said. He glanced away. "She wanted to—do something, but I thought it wasn't a good idea, and so she's kinda grumpy."

"Moonlight swim," Dipper said.

Teek coughed. "Uh—yeah. But—well—it just didn't seem like something we ought to do. Alone, I mean."

"We know what you mean," Wendy said kindly. "It's always easier in a group."

"Listen, man," Dipper said, "I know my sister can be a little—well, she can be Mabel, what else can I say? Bear with her. I know she's in love with you. Me, I'd try to plan it so that if Wendy and I had to be separated for a long time we'd have daily online chats and we'd get together like at Thanksgiving and Christmas and spring break, and then over the summer."

"Mabel doesn't really doubt you," Wendy told Teek. "She kinda doubts herself, I think. She doesn't know how pretty she is. Or how attractive."

"I know, right?" Teek said, looking back at them. "Man, I have never met a girl like her. All the crazy stuff we've done together—oh, my gosh. I can't imagine ever meeting anybody else that could come up to her. If I could just—you know, with the ring and all—but she says we're too young for that right now. And I don't know what my mom and dad would think. I mean, we're Catholic, you know, and you're not, I mean Mabel's not, but—well, she's spiritual in her own way, and—I'm babbling."

"It's OK, Teek," Dipper said. "Main thing, just let her know how you feel. I'd wait until she wanted to talk about how to handle a long-distance relationship and brought up the subject. Then suggest times when you two could get together through the year."

"She won't go to the art college in Georgia," Teek said. "She just flat refused to consider that."

"Too much of a home girl," Wendy agreed. "Gotta deal with that. Look, what you guys have is too good to mess up. But you have to live your own lives, too. Both of you have to give a little to make it work. Let us know if we can help."

"Thanks," Teek said, getting up. "I guess I'll go look for her around the pig pen."

* * *

Trouble was, she wasn't there. In fact, Mabel was in the upstairs bathroom of the Shack, muttering, "Why isn't this _working_?"

She'd sprinkled the dust in both shoes. She'd slipped her bare feet into the shoes. She's thought, "I'm invisible!"

Nothing at all happened. She still looked at herself from inside the mirror. She kept trying and nothing kept happening.

"Shoot. Must be expired," she muttered.

She dipped a finger inside the little leather pouch. It came out with the tip lightly coated in a greenish dust. She sniffed. It had no strong smell—though Jeff had said it would produce an odor once in her shoes—and it had a fine texture.

Making a wry face, she mumbled, "Jeff must have conned me. I shouldn't have given him the ring back so easily." Then, curious, she licked her fingertip.

The stuff didn't taste so good.

And a few moments later . . . stuff happened.


	4. Chapter 4

**Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

* * *

 **4: Sparks from a Short Fuse**

Mabel stared in the mirror and saw only the other wall of the bathroom staring back. It worked! She had vanished from sight, just like Jeff had promised.

Sort of.

Because as she could see in the mirror, or just by looking down, her sweater was still visible. And her shorts. And her shoes. She herself was perfectly transparent.

That had to be wrong. She remembered distinctly: when Jeff had vanished, his clothing had faded from sight together with him. "What did I do wrong?" she asked the mirror, which failed to reply.

Shoot. She'd have to go find Jeff and ask him to straighten the mess out. But she couldn't exactly traipse downstairs as an animated Mabel costume. People would wonder. Grunting, she sat on the toilet (lid closed) and tugged off her shoes.

She gasped when they came off. Whoo! Jeff had been right—the smell was like two decomposing cantaloupes, sickly sweet and mostly rotten, pretty overpowering.

But even after she dropped her shoes and wriggled her invisible toes, her feet and legs . . . did not show up. Still invisible.

She closed her eyes, which didn't help, since she could see through her eyelids. "I'm visible, I'm visible, I'm visible," she told herself. She wasn't visible.

"Maybe the gunk's stuck to my feet," she muttered. She ran four inches of water in the tub and dunked her feet in—they made feet-shaped holes in the water, and she felt the cold water on her soles and ankles, but aside from that nothing happened. She tried soap and a washcloth, sudsing her tootsies, then all but sanding the soles.

No soap. Even with her feet scrubbed squeaky clean and no longer smelly, though the ripe-rotten odor inside her shoes still lingered, she didn't return to the land of the visible.

Starting to feel a little panicky, she drained the tub. And then she heard footsteps on the stairs. Probably someone coming to use the bathroom! She did the only thing she could think of—she stripped and wadded her clothes and shoes into the hamper, then stepped into the tub.

Someone tapped at the door. "Anybody in there?"

Keeping absolutely quiet, Mabel sighed with relief. It was only Wendy. Wendy came in, locked the door, and shucked down her jeans before, well, having a wee. At one point she looked around sharply, but toward the door, not the tub. "Is anybody out there?" she called.

 _She heard me breathing!_ Mabel held her breath. Wendy finished, stood up, flushed, and adjusted her jeans. She opened the door and looked around. Mabel heard her puzzled "Huh." And then Wendy waved her hand in the air. "Man," she muttered, "what has Dipper been _eating_?" Wrinkling her nose, she opened the cabinet beneath the sink and took out a can of lemon-scented air freshener, which she used liberally. She left the bathroom door open, probably for it to air out.

Someone else might come up for the same purpose at any moment. Dipper. Or even Teek! Mabel hurriedly retrieved her clothes and shoes from the hamper, darted across the landing, and into the attic bedroom.

 _Gotta think, gotta think, gotta think!_

She realized she wasn't going to be able to find a way out of her dilemma in Dipper's room. But in her own room—downstairs—maybe!

She crammed her clothing and shoes beneath her old bed and then, clothed only in invisibility, she started downstairs. Teek came in, but didn't head up the stairs. Instead, he went down the hall. Mabel reached the ground floor and saw that he was tapping on her bedroom door. He asked softly, "Mabel? Are you in there? It's me."

She held her breath. There he was, not ten feet away, and here she was, naked. Except he couldn't see her. But—what if it wore off all of a sudden? Yikes!

Teek knocked again, tried the knob, and cracked the door open long enough to glance inside. He sighed, closed the door again, and headed back out.

Mabel flattened herself against the wall, and he passed literally only three or four inches from her. He very nearly stepped on her bare but unseen toes. She edged down the hall—like Wendy, he paused and glanced around suspiciously—and waited until he went back outside before ducking into her own bedroom and locking the door behind her.

"Gotta think, gotta think," she told herself, leaning against the door. She had never actually leaned against a door naked before, and she found the sensation interesting, hard, cool wood against shoulders, back, and hips. At least Soos kept everything in good repair, better than Stan had. She remembered how splintery the walls in the attic had been when she and Dipper were twelve, how her hands had looked like little pink baby porcupines from all the splinters. Now, down here on the family level, at least, surfaces were sanded smooth and wallpapered, painted, or lacquered.

Though come to that, if she got a few splinters in her butt, she might ask if Teek could pick them out—nah, other problems right now. She looked over at her cluttered vanity table.

 _Well, it's worth a shot!_

After having gone completely overboard with it when she was fifteen, Mabel now wasn't really all that much into makeup, but she did have foundation and concealer, and also eyebrow pencils and mascara—she worked quickly, and her face appeared more or less normal when she'd finished. She colored in her eyebrows and added the blusher to her cheeks and pale pink lipstick to her lips and smiled.

And realized she had no teeth. None visible, anyway. And her eyes looked normal, if she ignored the major difference of having no whites, irises, or pupils. Or eyelashes. Mascara could take care of the lashes, but—

 _Oh, man. Have to hide these eyes. And have to keep my mouth shut!_

And . . . she also lacked the top of her head and her hair. However, she had an emergency Mabel wig! She occasionally used it when she was late for school and didn't have time to fix her hair, so she dug it out, pulled it on over her own hair, and adjusted it, tucking her invisible locks up and under the wig. It was lumpy, but she rearranged it until it looked kind of normal in the mirror. That would do.

But she needed to cover her eyes—oh, yes, the mirrored sunglasses! Dipper had given them to her so they could meet the Gremloblin face to face and not have to worry about his nightmare gaze. She fished them out of a drawer and put them on. Now she looked kinda cool. In an over-made-up, slutty sort of a way.

Then she got dressed in jeans, sweater, socks—shoot, her hands! But she had a variety of gloves, one thin pair not quite flesh-colored, but maybe they'd do. "I got a rash," she told herself. "That's it! I touched some poison oak with my hands, and I have to keep it covered!"

Maybe if she could avoid close contact with people she could pass as normal, at least until she could get to the clearing and see if she could get in touch with Jeff to straighten this mess out.

But wait—she'd left her other clothes, her phone, her grappling hook, and her smelly shoes upstairs in Dipper's room. So first she went up to retrieve all that, then started back down.

And met Dipper on the stairs. Fortunately, he hadn't stopped to turn on the lights, so the upper stairs were shadowy. "What were you doing?" he asked her, looking up at her.

"Had to use the john, Brobro," she said, keeping her lips close together so he wouldn't notice her dearth of teeth. "Downstairs one was occupied."

"What's the idea of the shades?" he asked.

"Fashion, Dipper! It's a Fourth of July fashion statement! Uh, reminding people to reflect on American history! Get it?"

From the expression on Dipper's face, he didn't, but instead of pursuing the subject, he said, "Hey, Sis, Teek's looking all over for you."

"Uh, thanks! I'll go find him. Right now. Just—let me by."

He held onto her arm, stopping her. "Mabel, are you OK? You look sort of pale."

"Ate too much," she said, pulling free. "I'm gonna go find Teek now."

"What are you carrying? And what smells so bad?"

"I stepped in something and got it on my shoes and it's stinky. I took a quick shower, all right?" Mabel said. "Somebody was in the downstairs bathroom, so I came up to use yours and change my shoes and clothes, OK? I really need to go, Dipper."

"Go ahead," he said. "But please don't get into a fight with Teek. He's really trying to work things out."

"I won't," she said. "I don't want that, either. See you later!"

And she passed him, went to her room long enough to drop off the clothes and shoes she'd shed in the upstairs bathroom—after a moment of hesitation, she put the shoes in a plastic bag and tied it off tight to contain the aroma of invisibility—and then hurried outside.

From the far side of the yard, Teek called her, and she turned around and yelled back, "Sorry, Teek, I've got something I have to take care of right now! Let's get together at the lake for the fireworks, OK?"

"OK," he called back forlornly. "Meet you here around nine."

"Relax," she yelled, waving. "It isn't another guy, it's something else! Gravity Falls weirdness, that's all!"

"Want me to go with you?"

"No!" She'd said it too sharply and loudly. "Um, thanks, but this is something that I have to take care of myself. I promised the Gnomes. Trust me?"

"I trust you," Teek said, giving her a little pang inside.

* * *

Dipper found Wendy again. The two of them and Teek joined Soos and a few volunteers to bag up the trash and police the lawn for litter as people left the Shack, heading out around five PM. Most of them probably wouldn't even want dinner, but the fireworks wouldn't start until nine-thirty, when only a faint memory of the sun would linger above the western cliffs and stars would be coming out. Four and a half hours before that, lots of the townsfolk would go straight to the lake to claim primo spots for firework-watching on the beach.

Teek asked Dipper if something was up with Mabel. "I don't know," Dipper admitted. He told her she had hurried past him. "She said she'd eaten too much or something. I didn't think she looked like herself. Might have been those sunglasses."

Wendy, Dipper, and Teek carried the last three bulging trash bags over and heaved them into the bed of Soos's pickup. "Thanks, dawgs!" he said. "Anybody want to ride over to the dump with me to unload them? There's ten bucks in it!"

"I'll go," Teek said.

"Climb in! We'll be back in like half an hour."

Dipper could hear the sound of the vacuum from inside the Shack—Abuelita had to vacuum every single day, whether there was visible dirt or not—and he said to Wendy, "Want to walk out to the clearing?"

"You're on, man," Wendy said. They strolled out hand in hand. And with their special variety of telepathy, Wendy asked, _Are you worried about Mabes?_

— _I guess I kinda am. She wasn't very social today, was she?_

 _Nope. Not like her, man. I dunno what we can do, Dip. I've tried pep talks and offered to listen to her troubles, but she's not ready to open up, I suppose._

— _She can be so stubborn!_

 _Well, dude, to be fair—so can you. It's a Pines thing._

— _I suppose. Do I irritate you when I'm like that?_

 _Nope. 'Cause you and me understand each other about as well as two people can. I get you, and you get me. I'm not sure—don't take this the wrong way, I'm not dissing your sister, but I have to tell you—I'm not sure that Mabel even gets herself._

— _I know. She's not very introspective,_ Dipper agreed.

"Oh!" Wendy said, pretending to swoon like a heroine in an old silent movie, back of her right hand against her forehead, head tilted way back. "You're seducing me with your smooth nerd talk!"

"Yeah, yeah," Dipper said, chuckling.

"Mm, makes me all _hot_ ," she said, switching from Victorian Heroine to Sultry Teen.

"All right, I deserve that," Dipper said with a grin. Then, more seriously, he added, "Listen, can we kind of force Teek and Mabel to sit down with us and let us sort of referee as they talk it out? 'Cause I think that would help more than anything, just them getting on the same page and all with maybe having a long-distance relationship for a while."

Wendy looked both tired and a little dubious. "I dunno, man. Kinda hesitant about jumping into the middle of all that mess, but—well, if we can't come up with anything else, I guess."

They reached the bonfire clearing and sat on the log, close together. Dipper asked, "You still on for going up to the Point and watching the fireworks?

"Yeah, I am," Wendy said. "It'll be romantic. I'll let you drive if you want."

"Sounds good to me."

"Me, too," she whispered, looking at him with impish, half-closed eyes. Oh, those emerald eyes!

The two almost kissed, but then from somewhere in the depths of the forest, they heard Mabel—unmistakably her voice—and that stopped their lips two inches apart.

She was yelling one word:

"Noooo!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

* * *

 **5: Gnome Talk**

"Sh-shh-shhh!" Jeff said, frantically holding up both his hands. Mabel's shouted "NO!" had echoed and had frightened the birds—a flock of dark-eyed juncos burst into the air with a clatter of wings. In a fierce whisper, Jeff warned, "Please be quiet! Don't get any other Gnomes curious about this! I kind of violated a rule or two in giving you the fern seed stuff!"

"What do you _mean,_ there's no antidote?" Mabel said in an angry whisper. They were far in the forest, half a mile beyond the bonfire clearing, in a ferny little place where, Mabel remembered, the Gnomes had once staked her down like Gulliver at the mercy of Lilliputians. "There's always an antidote! There's got to be an antidote!"

"There's no antidote!" repeated Jeff, pacing with his hands behind his back. "Oh, the effect normally wears off in two days, and if you'd just had a pinch in your shoes, you would've washed the stuff off and immediately gone back to being visible, but if you take the mixture internally—I don't know! Maybe it'll wear off! Uh—give it time? Probably it'll wear off. Or, uh, maybe not. See, no Gnome's ever been dum—uh, _incautious_ enough to try eating the stuff before!"

"I didn't _eat_ it, I just _tasted_ it! But it didn't work in my shoes!" Mabel flopped down onto a round stone and sat with her elbows on her knees, her chin in her gloved hands. "I kept telling myself to be invisible. I mean, I tried and tried!"

"I don't understand that," Jeff said. "You put a little in each shoe?"

Mabel gave him, probably, a glare, though the mirrored shades made it difficult to be sure. "I put a small pinch in each shoe!"

Jeff sat down on a much smaller rock than Mabel's. "Huh. Stuff was in your shoes. You didn't wear socks?"

"I didn't wear socks!"

Jeff thought that over for a few seconds. "You let your feet get sweaty before putting on your shoes?"

Impatiently, Mabel began, "I let my fee—wait, what?" If Mabel had not been wearing a few coats of make-up, and if she had been visible, her face might have just turned purple. "Nobody said anything about sweaty feet!"

Jeff actually leaned backward, apprehensively. "Um. I didn't? My bad? Is—is that the way you say it? My bad?"

Mabel stood up and gestured at herself. "Anyway, when I did turn invisible, my clothes didn't change! And these aren't invisible, either! Look at me!"

"Oh," Jeff said, blinking. "Uh. That's another thing I kind of forgot, sorry. The materials. You have to have clothes made of the right materials for them to go invisible, too. Uh, boots made of moleskin leather? Shrew mole, harvested during the dark of the moon? And, um, shirt and hat and pants made from fabric woven from web silk spun during a waning moon by orb-spinning spiders? Those materials, you know, turn . . . uh . . . invisible when the wearer . . . like this." Jeff flickered out of sight. Then back into visibility. "See? It's in the materials."

"I was wearing a sweater I knitted myself from wool donated by some happy sheep!" Mabel said, sounding as if she were forcing the words between her clenched and invisible teeth. And denim shorts from Hot Topic! And the shoes were some of my old ballet flats! From Nordstrom!"

"Um . . . I guess there was no, uh, no manufacturer's warranty that they're sympathetic faders when exposed to the magical effects of fern seed . . . no, they wouldn't be. Sorry!" He brightened a little. "But you know, you can always go without clothes if you're invisible."

"Thanks heaps!"

"Lots of Gnome teens do that, except they wear shoes, of course. It's kind of a party game, trying to find each other by feel—wait." Jeff cocked an ear. "Somebody's coming."

"Oh, gosh! I don't want people to see me like this!" Mabel said. "Where can I hide?"

Jeff pointed. "There's the fern brake, but you might be sick of ferns—"

"Can it! You stay here and cover for me! I wasn't here, get it? I was never here!"

Mabel dropped to hands and knees and burrowed in among the drooping fern fronds. Her wig caught and pulled off her head, but she grabbed it and stuffed it down the front of her sweater. Then she hunkered deep in the thicket, waiting to see who was coming.

Jeff nervously paced around the shady clearing, humming. It seemed to take a long time, but finally Mabel heard Wendy's voice calling from somewhere not too far off: "Mabel! Yo, Mabel! Where are you?"

Jeff cleared his throat.

"I heard something!" Dipper's voice. "Over this way!"

Then some rustling of the underbrush, and Dipper said, "Jeff! Have you seen Mabel?"

"Mabel?" Jeff asked, his voice pitched unusually high. "You mean your sister, Mabel? That Mabel? The one who we proposed to?"

"Yes!" Dipper said. "We heard her yell a while ago. She's around somewhere, and we're afraid she may be in trouble. Is she here?"

"Here, in this clearing? No," Jeff said. "Definitely not. I would know. Because I've been here."

"What are _you_ doing here, dude?" Wendy, no doubt right beside Dipper.

Mabel heard Jeff chuckle in about as un-innocent a way as she'd ever heard anyone, and that included Grunkle Stan, chuckle. "Me? Oh, you know. Being a Prime Minister is a tough job. You have to go off by yourself now and then and, uh, you know, practice your . . . hobbies."

"I didn't know Gnomes had hobbies," Dipper said.

"Sure we do!"

Dipper sounded impatient: "Oh, well, if you see Mabel, tell her we're looking for—"

Mabel was trying without success to peer out from the fern thicket, and a frond went inside her nose. She sneezed violently.

"What was that?" Wendy asked.

Quickly, Jeff said, "That was me!"

Dipper began, "It sounded like it came from over—"

"That's my hobby!" Jeff said. "Ventriloquism! Just demonstrating. Wait a minute, I'll do a woodpecker."

Silence. Jeff coughed. "Sometimes I have to warm up. That's a hard one, the, uh, the wood . . . woodpecker."

In the distance, a woodpecker began to hammer. "See?" Jeff said as soon as the sound paused. "Lady and gentleman, a woodpecker!"

"I think that _was_ a woodpecker," Dipper said.

The woodpecker started again.

"No, _that's_ a real one!" Jeff said. "It thought my woodpecker was real, and it's answering the, uh, my knock. Hey, am I good or what?" He snapped his fingers. "Mabel! Oh, right. Now I remember. I did see her some time back, on the trail. She was heading toward the Mystery Shack. She's probably there by now. You know. Because of her legs. They're long. Longer than mine, I mean. So she moves. Pretty, uh, fast."

"Try her phone," Wendy suggested.

"OK."

Mabel frantically dug out her phone and powered it off.

Seconds passed. "Got her voicemail," Dipper said. Then: "Mabel, this is Dipper. I'm worried about you. Where are you? Give me a call back to let me know you're safe."

"Want me to check the Shack?" Wendy asked. Another pause. Then she said, "Soos! Is Mabel there? Yeah, we think maybe. No? You sure? Go check her room . . .. Oh, I see. OK, thanks. Bye. Dipper, Soos hasn't seen her lately, but he thinks she and Teek might have left together. He didn't see Teek leaving, though, so he doesn't know for sure. Want to call Teek?"

"No, we'd just worry him. Let's go back and check around the Shack," Dipper said. "Hey, if nothing else, we can let Waddles come out on the trail. He can track her like a bloodhound."

"Are bloodhounds easy to track?" Jeff asked.

"Other way around," Dipper said. "They track you."

"Oh, no, thanks, I'm fine," Jeff said. "I know where I am. Right here. Hi, so are you."

"Look, if you see Mabel, tell her to get in touch right away," Dipper said.

"Sure thing!"

More crackling and rustling, and then Jeff called softly, "They're gone! You can come out now."

Mabel crept out of the ferns. Jeff stared at her. "Uh, you look kind of scary with no top to your head."

"Jeeze!" Mabel pulled the wig out of her sweater and tugged it back on. "Better?"

"Well, it's tangly and you've got leaves and twigs clinging to you. You've looked better," Jeff admitted. "What now?"

"I don't know!" Mabel wailed. "I can't go through life invisible! Can't you think of anything to cure this?"

"Sorry, I've never studied alchemy. But there's one thing we can try! I'll have to round up Shmebulock," Jeff said. "If anygnome can help you, he's the one."

Mabel stared at him incredulously. "Shmebulock? How can he do anything? He can only say his own name!"

"No, no, it's the _way_ he says it! If you know him well enough, you can always get the gist. And he's an old Gnome, wise in the ways of the lore. He's studied legends and has spoken with the wise ones of old and knows all the secrets of Gnomic Gnowledge. If there's any way to counteract orally ingested fern seed, Shmebulock's the Gnome to know it. I'll find him and bring him to you and maybe we can somehow fix you up."

"I can't wait for them to use Waddles to come and find me. I'll go back to the Mystery Shack," Mabel said. "I . . . guess I'll have to strip down and take off the make-up, because if anybody gets a close-up look at me in good light, I'm sunk. So, let me see—when you find Shmebulock, come to the Shack and go to the family porch, the one with the sofa on it. I'll wait there, but I guess I'll be invisible. You call my name if you don't—wait, you _won't_ see me. So just call my name, OK?"

"Got it. Be careful!"

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered. "Should've told me that when you gave me the stuff!"

Afternoon shadows were softening the trail as she walked back. She took out her phone, powered it up, and called Dipper's number. He answered at once: "Mabel! We've been looking for you!"

"Yeah, I just got your message," she said. "Sorry, I must've been in a dead spot. What's up?"

"We heard you yelling," Dipper said.

"Me? Must have been somebody else," Mabel said. "I haven't been around the Shack for the last half hour or so. Couldn't have been me."

"We were in the woods."

"Who?"

"Me and Wendy. And we heard you yell 'No.'"

"You and Wendy?" Mabel demanded. "Alone in the woods? Unchaperoned?" She'd long ago learned that when caught in a sticky situation, the best defense was to be offensive. "I thought you had a vow and everything. You know, if I told Mom what you were up to—"

"We just went for a walk!" Dipper said. "And we thought you were in trouble!"

"Definitely not me," Mabel said. "Because why would I go way out in the woods all alone with nobody with me for no reason? Listen, are you guys going over to the lake?"

"Yeah, let's see what time it is—in twenty minutes, about six. Soos and Abuelita and Melody have already left."

"Oh. Well, you're not taking Helen Wheels, are you?"

"No, Wendy's driving us, so you can have the car. Want us to wait for you?"

"No, that's OK," Mabel said. "I'm heading back to the Shack myself, but you'll be gone by the time I get there. Don't worry, I'll probably be along a little later. Got a few things to do first. Nothing important."

"See you there, then."

"Yeah, I really hope you will!" Mabel said.

Sounding concerned, Dipper asked, "You are OK, aren't you?"

"Fine, fine," Mabel said. "You two go along. Bye!"

She timed her walk just right and saw Wendy's green Dodge Dart rumble down the driveway just as she emerged from the woods. She hurried to the bathroom, scrubbed off the makeup—she looked like a melting wax figure, she thought, flashing back to the time she'd thrown hot coffee in the face of Wax Genghis Khan—and she used up all the bathroom tissue removing the last traces.

And then she took off her sweater, jeans, and underwear.

And tiptoed—though the Shack was empty and there was no one to alert—out to the porch. It still caught the late afternoon sun, and the sofa felt warm when she sat down on it.

Huh. Sitting out here stark naked. Feeling the evening breeze in places where no breeze had gone before. Despite her worry, despite everything, it felt oddly . . . nice. Titillating. Like skinny-dipping, she had enjoyed that, though Ronnie Nable had used every ounce of his concentration not to look at her.

But—well, she'd learned it was possible to be comfortable while naked and around someone else. File that away for later. Probably would come in handy some time.

"Come _on_ , Jeff," she muttered.

She sat there wondering how she could even see. Really, it should be impossible—her eyes were transparent, and so were her retinas, so there was no dark space for her lenses to send images inside, and nothing for the images to focus on—no retina, or at least no visible one. Yet she saw about as well as she normally did, though things looked a little fogged around the edges.

Mabel drew her knees up and sat lonely on the sofa, hoping that Jeff would come soon.

That he would bring Shmebulock.

And that the old Gnome would have some helpful idea.


	6. Chapter 6

**Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

* * *

 **6: Sizzle**

Mabel's eyes began to water. She was still blinking, but she'd never realized how much one would miss visible eyelids. At one point she dashed inside, got one of the trucker's caps from the gift shop (pink and white with a star), and went back to waiting for Jeff and Shmebulock, wearing only the cap pulled low. "Come on, come on," she kept urging the absent Gnomes.

The sun dropped below the tree line, which at least made it easier on her eyes. A squirrel ran through the yard, paused, sat up on its hind legs, and sniffed the air, looking all around as if it sensed her. A woodpecker landed on the totem pole (no good, it was plastic). It darted its head all about and then flew away, seeking woodier wood. Feeling exposed, Mabel put her heels on the sofa and hugged her knees. Maybe the squirrel and the bird had smelled her, or maybe they would just think the cap was resting on the back of the sofa.

Or maybe they could see in the infrared or whatever and could make her out sitting there all together in the altogether. Little furry, feathery pervs.

 _Come on, come on, come on!_

She sat invisibly chewing her invisible hair, an old habit she'd grown out of. Somehow, now that she felt so nervous, it came back. She was about to give up and go inside when she heard Jeff's voice: "Mabel! Are you there?"

"Here!" she said, jumping up, completely forgetting her state of _déshabillé_. Well, not exactly _dés_. More like no- _habillé_ -at-all, or as the French might also put it, _ooh-la-la_! She hadn't been a great French student, but she'd picked up a little of the language.

Whatever, when she called out, both Jeff and Shmebulock appeared—literally blinking into existence—and she realized the Gnomes had come invisibly into the Shack yard. "I'm up here on the sofa," she said. "This is me you don't see waving at you!"

They climbed the steps, not so easy for a Gnome, and stared up at the hat. "Shmebulock!" said Shmebulock.

"Exactly!" Jeff said. "I told you, remember? The human clothes don't go invisible. I think that's because they're made out of human materials."

"Hi, Shmebulock," said Mabel, uselessly waving again.

"Shmebulock," he said.

"Is the hat all you're uh—?" asked Jeff.

"Except for it, I'm starkers. In the nude. The naked truth. Sky-clad. Disrobed. Shall I go on?"

"Shmebulock."

Jeff interpreted: "He says no, we understand, and hello to you, too, and you are either a very brave girl or a very foolish girl to taste the _neffadiblecko._ In Gnomish, that means the invisible-making-fern-seed-powder."

"I didn't _mean_ to," Mabel said. "I just had a little on the tip of my finger, and I touched it to my tongue."

Shaking his head, Shmebulock commented, "Shmebulock."

Jeff, looking uneasy, explained, "Uh, he says that it's much more powerful if taken internally, but even eaten, it may wear off in six months or so."

"Shmebulock!"

Looking even more uneasy, Jeff added, "Uh, or it may not wear off then."

With a shrug, Shmebulock opined, "Shmebulock!"

Looking uneasiest of all, Jeff said, "Maybe never wear off at all."

"Guys!" Mabel howled. "Come on! This was your potion-thingy! There must be _something_ we can do!"

Jeff whispered something to Shmebulock, who nodded and whispered back. "OK," Jeff said, "he says it's all right for me to summarize our steps so far. First, we went to see the fairies, which is far from enchanting, take it from me. They laughed at us and made fun of us, but we persisted and explained that their formula had made a human girl invisible and asked what to do about her."

"Shmebulock!"

"No, no," Jeff said to his fellow Gnome, "I won't go into detail about what they said!"

"Why not?" Mabel asked.

"Um—because it's filthy?" Jeff said. "Anyway, when they stopped making, you know, sex jokes and all, they said there _were_ a couple of things you could try. But you can't be at all visible when you try them."

"I wouldn't call that a problem," Mabel said.

"I mean—even the cap—you couldn't, uh, wear anything. Or it might not work."

"I'll take it all off and try it, whatever it is. Just tell me!"

"Shembulock!" said Shmebulock, locking his hands beneath his chin and making his eyes get big and dreamy.

"Um—the fairies told us the first way is Love's True Kiss. That's _always_ the first thing fairies try, though. So if you can find your young man, Ticknor—"

"Teek!" Mabel insisted.

"Oh. Uh. We thought his name was Ticknor Keevan O'Grady."

"It is," Mabel said. "But he prefers Teek. At school they used to call him 'Tick' before I made up 'Teek'—huh." She broke off.

"Shmebulock."

"He says," said Jeff, "that's a good sign. If he accepted your name for him, he probably loves you. So the kiss thing, it's worth a shot!"

"Shmebulock." It didn't sound encouraging.

"Uh, but he says it very rarely works. The fairies just like to get people kissing each other. Anyhow, there's another possibility, but it's sort of drastic. A doctor would have to go in and snip out the little part of your stomach that the _neffadiblecko_ attached itself to. And that could be touchy because the doctor couldn't see it or you, so—" Jeff shrugged. "Your odds of success aren't too great."

"What else?" Mabel asked with a sigh.

"You could try bathing in the Gelfheim Hot Spring. That has a reputation for removing all enchantments."

"Point me in the right direction," Mabel said.

Jeff shuffled his feet while looking down at them. "It's, uh, in Norway. The Gnome district of Norway."

"Oh, great! Wait, are you guys Norsk?"

"Of coursk! Well, not us personally, but some Gnomes originally originated in Norway, we think. That's what our legends say. But in the old days, they came over from Europe in human ships, as part of the ballast. Anyway, some of our ancestors did. Others we think were always native to America—"

"Shembulock."

"Huh? What do you mean, T.M.I.? Oh, well, skip it. Mabel, we may or may not be partly Norwegian in our ancestry. That OK with you, buddy?"

"Shembulock, Shmebulock."

"I'll tell her. He says that the kiss thing is worth trying, but then plan B: if it doesn't work, to eat as much as you can hold."

"I can hold a lot," Mabel said.

"Shmebulock!"

"And then eat some more. And let nature take its course."

Mabel asked, "You mean—oh. Down the chute, huh? Flushed with success?"

"Shmebulock."

Jeff nodded and said, "Might take some time, he says. But it's one way to escape imprisonment."

"Shmebulock!"

With an irritable glance at his fellow Gnome, Jeff insisted, "That's what I said!"

"Shme-bu-lock!"

"Imprisment? That's not a human word."

Shmebulock waved his short arms in frustration.

"OK," Jeff said. "Never mind, never mind. Uh, sorry we can't be more definite, but, uh, you know, try those things. While you do, Shmebulock and I will go to ask the Fae King for advice. He's got a reputation as a wizard, but he's also a major pain in the nether regions."

"Lives underground, huh?" Mabel asked.

Looking a little confused, Jeff said, "Yes, but that's beside the point."

"Shmebulock."

"Uh, he's insisting that if the kiss thing doesn't work, and don't be too disappointed if it doesn't, because fairies are major jerks, do try the eating thing. Shmebulock thinks that may be your best chance."

"Shmebulock?"

Jeff waved him off. "Yes, I'll tell her, I'll tell her! Shmebulock says don't just eat things you're fond of. You're going for quantity here, so eat stuff you normally wouldn't touch."

Mabel thought back to her experiments in dining. Heck, she'd even made a video once—"Mabel's Guide to Eating Non-Foods." She could remember eating leaves, a (probably dead) caterpillar, paper, wood chips, stickers (the scented ones had once landed her in the hospital overnight), a penny, white glue—oh, a variety of things. The scented stickers were the most troublesome abdominably, and the Christmas-tree tinsel icicles the most festive. But if the order of the day was just to eat, including things she wouldn't ordinarily consume, she had that knocked. "I'll try everything once," she said.

Jeff nodded. "But the kiss first! That's easiest, if it works."

Mabel nodded and then realized her nods were not noticeable. "Roger that, the kiss."

Jeff sidled away a couple of steps. "All right, we're off for the Crawlspace. The Fae King has a curse-and-uncurse booth there, and if he can suggest anything else, I'll come back tomorrow morning, OK? Early? Around sunrise?"

Mabel sighed. "All right," she said. "Thanks, I guess."

"Shmebulock."

Jeff translated: "He says you're welcome, and to tell you the eating thing works when a teenage Gnome accidentally puts too much of the stuff in their shoes and has a hard time becoming visible again. It gets the _neffadiblecko_ out of your system, and you gradually get visible again over about three hours."

"OK," Mabel said. "Got it. See you tomorrow. Hope you see me!"

Jeff gave her a weak smile, and he and Shmebulock walked off, Shmebulock still talking.

* * *

Mabel went inside and called Teek. "Hi," he said. "I looked for you but—"

"Yeah, sorry, but I had an urgent errand to run," she said, her voice depressed. "I'm mean it, I'm sorry, Teek. I really am. Can we meet at the lake for the fireworks?"

"You—you really want to?" he asked, hope dawning in his voice.

"More than anything," she said truthfully. "Look, I've thought about it a lot. I miss us being _us_ , you know? So maybe we can work things out. I mean, I'd be willing to try. We'll see if we can find compromises and look for give-and-take. What Dipper suggested. I should've listened to him. He's a dork, but I love him like a brother. Anyhow, I'll try to make it work, OK?"

"Me, too," Teek said. He sounded as if he were on the verge of relieved laughter. "I—well, I'll tell you about what I've thought of. Maybe not tonight, though. Could we just this time, you know, just get together? Not talk about, you know—I'm saying you know a lot—not talk about the future or anything?"

"I'd love that," she said. "And I am gonna give you the biggest smooch! Meet you over beyond the Ranger station at nine, OK?"

He hesitated before asking, "Nine? You don't want to show up early?"

 _No, I don't want to show up during the last lingering daylight!_ "Nine," she said firmly. "I'll probably get there ahead of you and I'll watch for you. If you get there first, go around the shore to that place where the diving rock is, remember? It sticks out over the lake a little?"

"Oh, sure."

"I'll call out to you when I see you. And Teek? Don't be scared, OK?"

"I'm not scared," he said. "Just concerned. You know. I said it again."

"Don't be concerned, either. And we may not even stay for the fireworks. It kinda depends on what develops. But—I have to say it—whatever happens, I love you, Teek."

"L-love you, too, M-Mabel."

"Are you _crying_?"

"N-not quite."

"Cheer up."

"OK, but—I so look forward to seeing you, Mabel!"

"Yeah, well, hold onto that thought."

When she hung up, she thought, _OK._ _Can't wear clothes if this is gonna work. But can't drive to the lake invisible! And I can't put makeup on again. Think, think!_

All right, she remembered that very old black-and-white (blech!) movie that she and Dipper had watched on TV with the guy who turned himself invisible and wore gloves and an overcoat and wrapped his head up like a mummy. That seemed like a lot of trouble.

Especially—huh, oh, yeah! Especially when the Shack had a small assortment of rubber masks in the gift shop! She went to take inventory.

Not a whole lot of choice: the Wolf Man, the Frankenstein Monster, no thank you. But there was a Crazy Witch. It was green, with a huge hooked nose, snaggle teeth, and a fake-looking wig of silvery curls, but—it was female. That was a point in its favor. Mabel took it down from the shelf—fifty freaking bucks! Maybe she could talk Soos into a discount. She tried it on, and it fit well enough—at least she could see through the eye holes.

Hmm. She could wear her gloves again—aha! A raincoat! That would cover a multitude of sins and quite a bit of Mabel. In mask and raincoat, she could probably drive to the beach unnoticed. True, the witch mask was ugly, but, hey, in a town that boasted Toby Determined, she would hardly be a blip on the ugly radar.

Mabel assembled her costume and tried it on in her room, looking in the vanity mirror. Except for the shoes being detached from the raincoat hem by about a foot, she looked relatively normal for someone you couldn't even see.

She even got the giggles at her reflection.

Because the mask was uncomfortable—it pulled right over her head—she took everything off and checked the time. Rats! An hour and a half? She'd thought it was later!

However, she could fill up the time. And fill up herself as well. Mabel went to the kitchen, opened the fridge—brr! It gets uncomfortably cool when you're naked at the fridge—and started to pick up this and that and the other.

She went back to her room and stood in front of the vanity mirror, which didn't show her at all, and took a big bite out of a cold hamburger patty, which looked as if it were floating in air like a miniature all-beef UFO.

Weird. She saw the bite mark appear, but once the meat was in her mouth, it couldn't be seen. She opened her mouth: "Blaaa—"

Yep, there were the soggy, half-chewed morsels resting on her tongue, but apparently floating in mid-air. Interesting. And a little sickening. She ate the patty, and then, not necessarily in this order, a banana, half a jar of sauerkraut, a wedge of cheddar cheese with scoops of peanut butter, about a dozen grapes, some crackers, a container of prune yogurt ( _Might help things along,_ she thought), a piece of apple pie, and either six or seven maraschino cherries.

Burping, she went back for a refill. A pint of lemonade. She hard-boiled and downed two eggs. Ramen noodles! She found a packet that, according to the label, was "BEST BY 10/01/79" (probably a souvenir from Ford's college days—he never threw anything away). She prepared it and ate it anyway. After all, instant noodles, their best probably wasn't that far from their worst.

By then her stomach was rumbling. "Down, girl," she said, patting her invisibly bulging tummy. "If I'm lucky, the kiss will work. If not, I have a feeling that tomorrow morning things will get moving!"

She still had time left, so she continued to graze.

* * *

Meanwhile, Jeff and Shmebulock returned to the surface from the Crawl Space without having succeeded in persuading the Fae King to help without an exorbitant fee.

"Shmebulock," Shembulock said in a disgruntled tone.

"You got that right," Jeff told him. "He's a fae-king fake! I shoulda called him that."

In a more worried tone, Shmebulock said, "Shmebulock."

"OK, I know, I get it, I misunderstood you!" Jeff said. "Let it go. No, I _don't_ think we should go look up Mabel again. What if it doesn't even work at all? The kiss or the food thing? What good would it do when I mistakenly told her the invisibility would wear off over three hours when it's really three seconds?"

"Shmebulock."

"Right," Jeff said. "She can find out on her own, and she'll be happy when the spell ends quicker. My feeling exactly."

They were not far from the Shack, and they heard Mabel start up the Carino and drive away. "Shmebulock?" asked Shmebulock.

Jeff shrugged. "I suppose to meet the boy Teek. If he's willing to kiss her while she's naked and invisible, he might just love her enough to do the trick."

"Shmebulock!" his friend snickered.

Jeff shook his head. "Stop hanging around with the fairies. You're developing a dirty mind."


	7. Chapter 7

**Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

* * *

 **7\. Zoom**

"Looks like we're the first to arrive," Wendy said as the Green Machine pulled up the last rise of the winding road and turned onto the level plateau called Lookout Point. "Check it out! We'll get the best slot for watching fireworks! Right over there, Dip, to the right. Watch out, though, there's a little slope right in here. Don't want to roll over the edge."

Carefully, Dipper edged the Dodge Dart into position, put it in Park, and set the emergency brake. No one in his right mind would trust the safety rail, really just heavy rope cable strung between a dozen wooden posts, but just in case, he parked about a foot behind one of the posts—which looked solid enough—and parked with it centered on the front bumper.

If the Dart, or any car, nosed over the edge of Lookout Point, it would bounce along at a steep angle downslope about a thousand feet, tear into the forest, and if it managed to survive without smashing into a tree, not stop until maybe it collided with one of the struts of the water tower, which was a good way beneath them and a couple of miles distant, its single red beacon light blinking atop the conical roof. Not something he'd want to risk. He switched off the headlights. "This OK?"

"Perfect," Wendy said with a broad smile. "You can drive my car anytime."

"Looks like it's going to be a nice, clear night," Dipper said. It was a few minutes past nine, and the sun had gone down. Though the western sky held fading shades of salmon-pink and dusty orange, twilight was coming on fast. Far away, down in town, where the shades of the cliffs were deeper, the streetlights had winked on, warm and yellow. They could see headlights creeping along the roads and streets, though they were so distant that two headlights blended into one point of white light. The split cliffs, with the UFO-shaped underscoop and the WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS sign that had finally replaced the derelict old railroad bridge, stood silhouetted against the evening sky, the river just visible as a slender, shining ribbon winding off toward the horizon.

"Let's slide the seat back," Wendy said. It was a bench seat—older car—and Dipper released the catch. They braced their heels, shoved the seat back as far as it could go, and he scooched over and she scooched over and they met in the center. Say what you like about older cars, those bench seats were a definite plus, especially for a couple in their teens. "What's that star?" Wendy asked, pointing.

"Where? Oh, there to the left, sort of off to the south-west?"

"I guess. The only one out."

"I see it. Not a star, though. It's Jupiter."

Lazily, Wendy said, "Planet, then. Huh. And here I was gonna waste a wish on it."

Dipper chuckled. "Well, planets are probably just as good at granting wishes as stars are."

"Nah, wouldn't be the same. Fireworks should start in twenty minutes or so. I've never seen fireworks from up above."

"Mm," Dipper said. "I have, just once, but it's kinda hard to remember. Our folks took Mabel and me out to Florida to visit our grandmother and do the Disney World thing and all. I guess we were six or seven years old, somewhere in there. We took a night flight back from Orlando to California, and the plane went over Disney World just in time for their big fireworks show outside the Magic Kingdom castle. I had the window seat, so I could look down and see it. Very pretty."

"Guess Mabel was too busy being airsick?" Wendy said.

Dipper loved sitting close to his Lumberjack Girl. She always smelled so—woodsy. Not piney, but fresh and clean and reminiscent of the deep, still forest. He said, "No, she wasn't as bad back then. Matter of fact, I don't remember her ever being motion sick when we were little, not on long car trips or on the plane or anything. Even on the rides at the theme park. I mean, the teacup ride made _me_ queasy, but she got off and immediately gobbled down a warm churro, while I just wanted to sit down until my head stopped spinning."

"Huh. Guess the twin thing didn't include the motion-sickness gene, huh?"

"Guess not," he said. "Funny, but somehow when Mabel was about twelve or thirteen, I guess—anyhow, about the time we visited the Falls for the first time—she developed this weird fear of heights. That's when she started barfing every time she got aboard an airplane. She gets seasick, too, but only on the ocean, never on the lake."

"Anyway, I'm glad we finally located her this afternoon," Wendy said, snuggling closer to him.

He put his arm around her. "Me, too. I worry about Sis. She's moodier than she used to be. I mean, she'd get angry or upset or something, and like half an hour later, she was completely over it. She seems to have a longer, I don't know, hang time lately."

"Hormones," Wendy said. "Part of being a middle teen. Wait until she gets to be nineteen and all mature, like me." She playfully nibbled his ear, then kissed his neck, probably with enough suction to leave a mark.

"Ooh," he said, shivering. "Right. Mature. Right, got it."

She chuckled low in her throat. "Rather have me all angsty, like a fourteen-year-old? 'Oh, Dipper, you don't love me at all, you sent an email to that Eloise person! Oh, Dipper, I'm sorry I said that, 'cause I love you so much! No, wait, I changed my mind. Dipper, I hate you, you terrible person, you didn't smile at me! Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm terrible, I'm awful, you must despise me!'"

Dipper silenced her play-acting with a kiss, and then told her, "Considering the alternatives, I think I like you mature like this."

She sighed deeply, her breath peppermint-scented, and they nuzzled, exchanging thoughts: _You're still worrying about Mabel._

— _Yeah, sorry, can't help it, Wen. I know we all change, but—I really hope she's not changing for the worse._

 _Yeah, well, I don't think she'll suddenly become all emo and everything. In psychology class they taught us that a person's basic character is pretty well set at age 12, but the teen years modify it. Mabel's basically an optimist. This summer she just got ambushed by her feelings for Teek and her panic at maybe having to have a long-distance relationship. And hormones, like I said._

— _I know, I know. But my personality was set at twelve, too, Lumberjack Girl. That means I'm a worrier._

He felt a little wave of amusement from her. _In my psych class, we learned all sorts of ways of classifying personality development. Know what Dr. Sigmund Freud's term was for teens your age?_

— _No. That must've been in your college class. We didn't get that in high-school psych class._

 _Yeah, 'cause it's for mature audiences only. By Freud's definition, dude, you're in the_ genital _stage. What do you think about that?_

— _I think it might be . . . worth exploring._

What with one thing and another, when the fireworks started, a somewhat distracted Wendy and Dipper almost missed them, but finally one or the other of them noticed and said, "Hey, look at that!"

That evening was something breathtaking, spectacular.

The fireworks were pretty good, too.

* * *

Mabel turned off on the drive to the lake and thought, _Man, I'm gonna have to park a mile away!_ Crowds had already claimed every parking spot for the beach. However, there is always more than a single way to deprive a feline of its pelt, and she recalled that Tate McGucket had bulldozed a narrow, graveled drive that led off from the main driveway, just for delivery trucks bringing supplies to the ranger station.

Of course it was blocked by a boom gate—essentially a white-and-orange pole that pivoted up or down—but it was hand-operated, not automatic. She turned in the parking lot, drove back to the spot where the gravel drive led off to her left, pulled Helen Wheels off on the shoulder, took off the mask, gloves, coat, and shoes, and slipped out of her car invisbly. She grimaced as the gravel hurt her bare feet, but she could approach the locked side of the gate on the grass, with the headlights shining on it.

The gate had a padlock to secure it, but it was an old-fashioned brass one, nothing complicated. And Mabel had a little toolkit in the glove compartment of the Carino. Humming, she opened the passenger door and took out a plastic case from which she selected a tiny screwdriver, the kind most useful for repairing eyeglasses or fiddling around inside a computer. She also took from the case a peculiarly bent paperclip, something she'd had for years. It had been specially prepared just for her by a dear relative.

She took both to the lock, inserted the little screwdriver in the keyhole, and with her tongue in the corner of her mouth, she performed a rake—a little trick that Stanley had taught her one day when she was twelve or thirteen—and felt the tumblers moving, one by one. Using the paperclip as a tension wrench, she pressed the moving tumblers into place: one, two, three, four, five—click! Ha-ha! Manual dexterity paid off again.*

The lock popped open, she twisted it, and the shackle slipped out from the lock eyes. She released the boom, gave it a gentle shove, and the counterweight swung it smoothly up and out of the way. Job well done.

She hopped back into the car, pulled down the crunching gravel drive and then off onto the grass in the cover of some rhododendrons, and went back, again on the grass, to close the gate, though she left the lock hanging open, against—as the Wizard of Oz had once put it—the advent of a quick getaway.

The grass already was wet with dew. Her bare feet tingled. She could hear the murmurs of the crowd over on the swimming beach, and in the growing twilight she at first skulked—but then she asked herself, "What am I doing, skulking? Am I some kind of skulker? No! I'm Miss Invisible! Shoulders back! Chest out! Ooh, the breeze tickles! Here we go!"

She strode through the ankle-high grass to the ranger's station, then detoured past the foot of the long pier. Six or eight people were already sitting on it, waiting for full dark and the fireworks. Mabel heard a familiar tinkling laugh and looked, but she could not locate Pacifica, who was probably either out on the pier with her boyfriend or, possibly, out on a boat with him.

Mabel grinned. It would be so easy to pull a harmless little trick on Paz! Maybe slip up behind and grope Danny, her boyfriend, and make him think it was Paz who did it. But, no, that would be wrong. And anyway, she didn't know where they were.

She had to struggle a little as she reached the higher ground beyond the pier—no path there at all. She figured nobody would be at the diving rock—it wasn't easy to get to, because the ground sloped down so sharply toward the lake and the rock, and there were no lights. Of course, some cuddling couples preferred darkness, but most of them would find somewhere more accessible and comfortable, as had Dipper and Wendy, who were going to watch the fireworks from Lookout Point.

She got to the rock, panting a little, and could just see it in the gathering gloom, a grayish projection shaped a little like a fat surfboard. It overhung the lake at a point where the drop-off was steep, so if you dived or jumped in here, you'd plunge into six or eight feet of water. Just past the rock, a wandering creek had dug a broad inlet—sandy-bottomed and OK for wading, because up to the edge of the lake the water was only a couple of feet deep at most—but marked by warning signs because if the wading kiddies stepped just a little too far in the wrong direction, they would be in way over their heads.

However, the diving rock looked deserted in the dusk, so she walked out on it—it still held the heat of the sun, as she felt through her bare soles—and sat down about in the middle. It felt so warm that she reclined, then rolled onto her tummy, like a lizard on a hot rock. Those lizards were onto something—the warmth was comforting and soothing, though the smooth stone felt hard beneath her.

She crossed her arms and rested her cheek on them, head turned so she could gaze toward the distant swimming beach, where lanterns and tiki torches burned. She hoped Teek would bring a flashlight or lantern or something. Should have told him that. She regretted not bringing her phone—but she had no way of concealing it, aside from trying to cram it into her mouth, and she didn't know if that would be bad for the phone or for her mouth.

She felt her stomach rumbling. "Easy there, easy," she murmured. Usually she could indulge herself without restraint and never suffer an upset tummy. Flying or being out on the ocean in a small boat were the only things that made her feel sick. Heights were about the only force of nature that, without moving, could nauseate her. But now—she felt vaguely uneasy about all that food.

"Maybe the Ramen noodles were a mistake," she muttered as a sour burp worked its way out.

The night came on. And then she saw a light approaching, weaving an uncertain way across the sharp slope. She sat up again, alert. Was it Teek or someone else? A necking couple? The ranger?

The flashlight wavered as the walker took a winding course in the brush. Then it came downhill as it approached the shore end of the diving rock—she still couldn't make out the features of whoever carried it—and at last she heard Teek's whisper: "Mabel?"

"Here!" she said, pushing herself up and standing. "Come out on the rock!"

The light flashed at and through her. "Where are you?"

She chuckled. "Come on out, I'll show you!"

With the light shining down on the rock, Teek edged out, obviously puzzled and disturbed. "Stop right there!" she said. She approached him and reached out to hug him. "Here I am!"

His voice sounded panicked: "I can't see you!"

"I'm invisible, but I'm right here!"

Teek put out a hand, encountered something soft, and jerked away as if he'd been burned. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean—!"

"Booby trap!" Mabel chortled. "Get it? It's OK, I know you can't see me. Hold still. Mmmph!"

Now, _that_ kiss went right into their top ten. Open-mouthed, lips to lips, tongues jousting, the whole nine yards. And pressed against Teek, Mabel could feel his, um, rising interest. He put his free arm around her, and she felt his hand sweep down her spine to the curve of her buttocks. And pull her tighter against him.

"Mmwah!" she said, breaking the kiss at last. "Am I visible?"

The light came up. "No," Teek said, his voice shaky. "But you're definitely Mabel! What happened?"

"Oh, I was stupid!" Mabel said. "I tried a dumb Gnome potion and it backfired. Listen, Teek, tell me the honest truth, OK? It's so important. Do you love me?"

"Mabel—yes! I love you!" Teek said. She couldn't doubt him, not from the way he said the words.

She reached out and caressed the back of his neck. "And I love you, too. So let's try this again." She drew him close once more.

And the next kiss went straight to the number one spot, like a bullet.

However, sadly, it too missed the mark. "Dang it," Mabel muttered. "The Gnomes thought that might work. True love's true kiss or something. But it might take hours. I guess we ought—urp!"

Teek's hand clasped her right buttock. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Mabel said. "Uh, let go of my ass, OK?"

"Sorry! Sorry!" He released his grip and took a step back.

"No, any other time, but—urp! I think it's something I—'scuse me!"

She suddenly turned away and knelt down and crept to the edge of the rock on hands and knees. She leaned out over the water. "Teek, I'm sorry, but I think I gotta barf— _blarrrghh_!"

Colorful lights burst out, and for an instant she thought the fireworks had begun. But no.

She was barfing a brilliant, shining rainbow, though limited to blue-green-yellow-red, all brightly glowing colors. They cascaded gracefully from her mouth down into the lake—the old Technicolor yawn.

Teek sat close beside her and felt until he located her head. He held her invisible hair back, and she leaned against him, retching and yacking continuously. "Mabel! Are you OK?"

"Ugh-huhgh!" She couldn't say more—she couldn't stop barfing, with a long, continuous _blaaaghhhh_ sound. The colors kept streaming and streaming, down into the water ten feet below, where they dissipated. Then she heard people crying out, "Oh, look at that!" and thought _I'm busted!_

But, no, out over the lake the fireworks had begun. Their multicolored display flashed out way up in the sky, giving the scene some illumination—and she realized that, from certain points along the far beach, she and Teek might be visible to the crowd. Well, Teek, anyhow.

The spasm seemed to go on forever, but then at last everything that could come up _had_ come up, transformed into the shimmering prism. And when it ended—she heard a gasp.

"Mabel, you're naked!" Teek said.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said, "I told you that—oh, my God!"

Because, about three seconds after she'd finished throwing up—she'd become fully, abundantly, curvaceously visible again.

And a dumbstruck Teek was spotlighting all the contours of Mabel with his flashlight, too charmed or stunned or something to realize.

Someone yelled, "Hey! Look at that!"

And Mabel could only hope "that" was a skyrocket.

* * *

*Don't try this method of picking a lock at home. Especially don't try it at someone else's home.**

**Oh, and really especially at night, and as Stan warned Mabel, "Most especially of all, not when there's cops around." This has been a Stan tip, brought to you free of charge. When you're in Oregon, visit the Mystery Shack, fun for the whole family! Bring money.


	8. Chapter 8

**Like a Skyrocket**

 **(July 4, 2016)**

* * *

 **8\. Ka-Pow!**

Over the lake, the fireworks built toward the big climax—meaning that with the growing number of bursting rockets, the earth beneath began to light up nearly as much as though a brilliant full moon were shining. "I need clothes!" Mabel wailed, still on her knees, rolled up like a pill bug.

"Here, here, here!" Teek had pulled off his shirt—a short-sleeved button-up, dark blue, not her best color, but naked beggars couldn't be naked choosers. He helped her get her arms into it.

She stood up, fumbling with the buttons. The shirt hung on her loosely. "Well, that takes care of the balcony. Feels like my butt is showing, though!"

Standing behind her, Teek said, "Yeahhh . . . uh, I mean it is! Hang on!" He kicked off his sneakers and squirmed out of his jeans. "Take these!"

Mabel stepped into them and pulled them up and zipped and fastened them. They were too loose—there was a belt, but even cinched to the last hole, it left the jeans saggy and ready to fall off. Also, the legs were inches long for her, nearly tripping her up.

Teek, in tighty-whities and socks only, knelt down and said, "I got this, I got this." He rolled up the cuffs, one after the other, until they cleared her ankles.

"They're falling off, though," Mabel said.

"Right, right, just a second." He frantically unlaced his sneakers, tied the laces end to end, and then said, "Use this like a belt."

She threaded the laces through the belt loops and, as Teek held the jeans up, she tightly tied the laces. That made it possible, barely (heh, "barely") for her to walk without the jeans pooling around her ankles, though she kept a grip on the waistband just below her navel. "Let's get out of here."

Teek stumbled—the sneakers kept flopping off—but they hurried back toward the gate. "Where'd you park?" Mabel asked.

Teek, losing a shoe, said, "Right outside the gate, on the shoulder."

"Heading in or out?"

He reached down and found the missing left shoe, then kicked off the right and carried both in his hand. "Out, toward the highway."

Mabel grabbed his arm and tugged. "We'll go in your car!"

"I'll need my keys."

She stopped and fished in his jeans pocket. "Here they are. Turn off the flashlight, we don't want to attract any attention."

In the dark they blundered a little, and at one point Teek, who had taken off both his floppy shoes and his wet socks, cursed a little when he blundered out onto the painful gravel. When they reached Helen Wheels, Mabel said, "One second." She opened the passenger door, retrieved her phone, and said, "Let's go."

The fireworks show had ended, and other people had the same idea. As they reached Teek's silver Fusion, a few cars rolled past on the main, paved drive. Someone whistled from one of them. And then a red convertible came by, top down, a blonde girl at the wheel. Pacifica's voice rang out: "Oooh! What have you two naughty kids been up to? Lookin' good, Teek!"

"I'll never live this down," Teek groaned.

"Get in and drive!" Mabel said, shoving him toward the driver's door of his car. She slipped into the passenger seat. "Thanks for coming to my rescue, Teek! And thanks for the clothes! I didn't bring any—oh, shoot!"

Teek tried to slip his car into the line of traffic. "It's OK, it's OK, just—don't ever—invisible—it's so—go ahead and honk, we're getting out of here!" The last part was addressed to a driver who didn't want to let Teek cut in, but gave way at last. As in all such situations, the driver could not possibly have heard or responded.

"I just remembered," Mabel said, "I had a raincoat in my car. Sorry, I was so flustered it slipped my mind."

"Not going back now," Teek said firmly.

Mabel had her phone out, punching a speed-dial number. "I'll take care of it. Come on, Brobro, answer!"

Xxx

"Mabel's ring," Dipper said, writhing. He and Wendy were sort of lying down, and he had to squirm to pull out his phone. Wendy pushed up off him and he sat up. "What is it?"

"Emergency, Broseph!" his sister said. "Listen carefully. Helen Wheels is trapped behind enemy lines and you have to get her out before the authorities show up."

Dipper blinked, a little resentful at having been called away from the pleasant occupation of kissing his girlfriend. "What? You're not making sense!"

Wendy was hand-brushing her hair. She whispered, "What?"

Dipper shook his head—not that she could see—and said, "Slow down, OK? Tell me what you're talking about."

"Too long to go into right now," Mabel said. "Listen: Helen Wheels is about twenty yards in on that gravel drive leading to the ranger station, you know it? She's close to some bushes to the left of the drive. Get her and bring her home. Wait, you do have your keys?"

"Got them," Dipper said. "Why can't you—"

"Because Teek's driving me to the Shack, and neither one of us has any clothes! Listen, you need to re-lock the gate. Just pull it back down after you get Helen through it and then click the padlock in place, it'll lock automatically. Meet you at the Shack, and yes, you can ask some dumb questions then! Hurry!"

She hung up, and Dipper rapidly summarized the conversation, such as it was.

"Both of them naked?" Wendy said. "We gotta check this out. Get out and let me drive. I can make better time."

So Dipper took the shotgun position. By that time, another five cars with teens inside had pulled out onto Lookout Point to watch the fireworks, or to make some of their own. She deftly did a three-point turn and then they sped down to the road leading to the lake.

Getting there wasn't hard—the traffic was streaming out, not in, and Durland was directing traffic at the turn-out onto the highway. Wendy parked her car on the right shoulder, just before the gravel drive started, and she and Dipper climbed out. The headlights of the passing cars gave enough illumination for them to see what they were doing at the gate.

"Wonder how she unlocked this thing?" Wendy said, swinging the boom up. The hanging padlock clanked a little.

"Better not ask," Dipper said as they went through. "Might make us accomplices after the fact."

He had his pocket flashlight, and they quickly found Helen Wheels nestled in its little grove of rhododendrons. They climbed in. Wendy, in the passenger seat, reached under her and pulled something out. "What is this? Oh, a wig. And—raincoat? Ugh, something cold and rubbery—Halloween mask? Dude, I gotta stay long enough to hear how Mabes explains this!"

Dipper got the car started, with some difficulty back-and-forthed it until he could turn around and go down the drive, and stopped as Wendy hopped out to lock the gate. The outgoing traffic was nearly outgone by that time, and she hurried to reclaim her own car. "Meet you at the Shack!" she called.

When he could, Dipper nosed Helen Wheels out onto the main drive, pausing long enough to give Wendy a clear spot in the traffic. She pulled in ahead of him, doing a tight turn, then he fell in behind her, and they soon made the turn for town.

Wendy took a shortcut—she knew them all—and Dipper followed, and in less than ten minutes, they parked side by side in the Shack lot, next to Teek's car. Soos, Melody, and Abuelita had not yet returned—they'd been out on Soos's boat, _The Cool Dad,_ and Dipper supposed returning and mooring would make them a little later than the beach-sitters.

Teek couldn't have been there long—the Fusion's cooling engine was still ticking. They hurried past the car and walked into the Shack, and down the hall stood Teek, barefoot and wearing nothing but his undershorts. "I can explain!" he said, cringing.

"Mabel's explanation will be more interesting," Dipper said. Teek looked so mortified—hair disheveled, hands demurely crossed at his crotch, knobby knees showing, face red—that Dipper couldn't be mad at him. "You need to borrow some pants, Teek?"

But then the door of Mabel's room opened, and Mabel tossed out a pair of jeans and a shirt. "Mabel!" Dipper called. "Come on out!"

"You asked for it!" Mabel stepped into the hallway. In pink bra and panties.

Dipper spluttered. "Go back and put on some clothes!"

"Make up your mind! And don't yell at Teek, he was a gentleman and gave me clothes when I was stark naked!" She went back into her room.

Teek couldn't seem to get dressed. He hopped on one foot, trying frantically but unsuccessfully to put the other inside his jeans leg.

"We'll be in the parlor," Wendy said kindly. "Take your time."

Five minutes later, both Teek and Mabel came in, Teek dressed and in sneakers again—though they were unlaced—and Mabel in shorts and sweater. "That's better," she said. "You can't imagine how embarrassing it is to be out at a fireworks show completely naked."

"Yeah, not something I'd ordinarily try," Wendy agreed. "So why'd you do it?"

"Because if I wasn't naked, people would see me," Mabel said reasonably.

"I don't follow," Dipper said.

"She was invisible," Teek said, sounding meek.

Dipper raised his eyebrows. "Invisible? As in Claude Rains?"

"I don't know what that is," Mabel said, "but I was like Transparent Girl. Completely unseeable. It was Jeff's fault."

"The Gnome?" Wendy asked. "Jeff made you invisible? Why?"

"Because I asked him to do it," Mabel said. "Only he didn't give me the full directions, and I put some of the stuff on my tongue and then I had to barf it up before anybody could see me again, but Jeff didn't explain that, either, and the other way was Love's True Kiss, and Teek was planning to meet me at the lake anyway, so I had to get him to kiss me and the only way I could do that was while I was naked! Understand?"

"No," Dipper said.

"Well—deal with it. But anywho, Teek came out and kissed me and grabbed hold of my butt—"

"What?"" Dipper asked.

"It's cool, he couldn't see what he was holding, and he let go the moment I asked. But the kiss must've not had time to work, 'cause I'd eaten expired noodles."

"Dude, you lost me," Wendy said.

"Well, bad noodles, see, and they came up with everything else, and guess what? The invisibility stuff makes you puke rainbows instead of puking, well, puke, and it was actually kind of cool! But then I lost my invisibility, and there I was on my hands and knees leaning over the edge, with my butt up in the air, and anybody could've seen me, but Teek gave me his clothes, and that's how we got home!"

Dipper rubbed his eyes. "I'm sure this makes perfect sense to you," he said.

"But I learned something tonight," Mabel said.

"Here comes the Aesop," Wendy warned.

"Nope, not gonna say it," Mabel told her. "But Teek and me—I think we're gonna be OK now. I was tempted to do something foolish, but I didn't."

"You . . . didn't do . . . anything . . . foolish," Dipper said.

"Nope. Well, not the most foolish thing. Which would've been not to trust Teek."

Wendy cocked her head. "Listen. There's Soos's truck pulling in."

Mabel blushed pink. "Uh—could we put off further discussion until maybe tomorrow or later?"

Wearily, Dipper zipped his lip.

Soos and Melody came in with Abuelita, Soos carrying the cooler he always took out onto his boat. "Hiya, dawgs!" he said cheerfully. "What time is it? Nearly eleven! Better get this put away and get some sleep. Day after the Fourth is always a real busy one!"

"Yeah," Teek said, "I'll need to get home."

"Sorry I tied your shoelaces so hard we couldn't get them apart," Mabel said.

"It's OK. I've got an unopened pair at home in my sock drawer," Teek said. "See me off?"

They walked out to the parking lot, hand in hand.

Melody and Abuelita said their goodnights and went to their rooms. Soos emptied the ice from the cooler into the kitchen sink and then looked in again. "What did you guys think about the fireworks show?"

Dipper and Wendy looked at each other and both got the giggles. "It was really one to remember, Soos," Wendy finally said.

And Dipper agreed, squeezing her hand: "One to remember."

* * *

 _The End_


End file.
